174 



PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION. 



the events, that they differ in many important details, far too 

 important, as it seems to me, to be admitted as the usual in- 

 accuracies of eye-witnesses : by such reflections as these, which 

 1 give not as having the least novelty or value, but as they in- 

 fluenced me, I gradually came to disbelieve in Christianity as a 

 divine revelation. The fact that many false religions have spread 

 over large portions of the earth like wildfire had some weight 

 with me. 



But I was very unwilling to give up my belief ; I feel sure 

 of this, for I can well remember often and often inventing day- 

 dreams of old letters between distinguished Romans, and 

 manuscripts being discovered at Pompeii or elsewhere, which 

 confirmed in the most striking manner all that was written in 

 the Gospels. But I found it more and more difficult, with free 

 scope given to my imagination, to invent evidence which would 

 suffice to convince me. Thus disbelief crept over me at a very 

 slow rate, but was at last complete. The rate was so slow 

 that I felt no distress. 



Although I did not think much about the existence of a 

 personal God until a considerably later period of my life, I will 

 here give the vague conclusions to which I have been driven. 

 The old argument from design in Nature, as given by Paley, 

 which formerly seemed to me so conclusive, fails, now that the 

 law of natural selection has been discovered. We can no 

 longer argue that, for instance, the beautiful hinge of a bivalve 

 shell must have been made by an intelligent being, like the 

 hinge of a door by a man. There seems to be no more design 

 in the variability of organic beings, and in the action of natural 

 selection, than in the course which the wind blows. But I 

 have discussed this subject at the end of my book on the 

 Variation of Domesticated Animals and Plants, and the argu- 

 ment there given has never, as far as I can see, been an- 

 swered. 



Without doubt, the influence of the conclusions 

 deducible from the theory of Evolution are fatal to 

 beHef in the supernatural. When we say the super- 



